While many Santa Monica kids spent the summer playing video games or traveling, Matteo Milk spent his learning to code and selling websites to local businesses.
The 14-year-old student at John Adams Middle School founded MilkWebDesign.com this summer and runs it with his partner, Mason Alvarez. The pair builds websites in HTML and CSS for hair salons, barbershops, boutiques, restaurants, food trucks, supermarkets, international hotels and appliance repair services.
Milk said he has built more than 15 websites, which he estimates would be worth $6,000 to $14,000 each. Instead, he charges what he calls "kid prices": about $120 upfront and $50 a month for maintenance. He said the average agency charges $3,000 upfront and $200 for maintenance.
The business has brought in $2,000 so far, plus $700 in recurring monthly revenue, Milk said.
The idea came from a video his mother showed him over the summer. In it, a man in his 30s was on a call with a Mexican restaurant, offering to sell the restaurant a $3,000 website he had built from the restaurant's Google and Instagram information.
"Look how much money this guy is making, Matteo," Milk recalled his mother saying.
"When I saw it I thought that this should be my new business," he said.
He told his mother, "If I had a laptop I could do this too." She handed him his older brother's old laptop.
It wasn't his first venture. "In the past few years I have started multiple school businesses that were kind of a joke and made me little to no money," Milk said. They included selling painted rocks, delivering food after school to classmates — "a type of kid doordash for the school" — and creating a new currency in fifth grade that he traded for real money.
The video also left him wondering how someone could sell a $3,000 website to a local restaurant. He said he keeps his prices low because running a single-location store or a brand-new location can be difficult.
He had help from family. His older sister, who worked in web design, taught him how to build a site from scratch.
"She was always very supportive and while others thought I would never get any sales and this was just an idea that would last two weeks she truly believed and I am incredibly grateful for that," Milk said.
His father, who runs the artisanal marketplace handmade.com, taught him how to host a site, buy a domain, draw search traffic, set up a Google business profile, buy Google ads and "how to talk to clients."
Milk and Alvarez find clients two ways. The first is going door to door on streets lined with independent shops, such as Pico Boulevard, Ocean Park Boulevard and Main Street.
Milk said his pitch goes something like this: "Hey good afternoon, could I ask you guys a question? Do you have a website currently?" If the answer is no, he tells owners that he and his partner code websites and "we think you're missing on a lot of clients and revenue."
The key promise: "We build your website beforehand so if you are not interested you don't have to pay a dime."
The second method is searching Google business profiles for shops with no website linked, then building a sample site before reaching out.
Milk said building first earns trust. "If we told them that they would have to pay us for our work they would just think we were going to give them some awful website and charge them," he said. This way, "they don't have to stress about their money going to waste."
His first customer, Masih Hair Salon, has since referred him to more clients as new appointments came in through the site.
"I am so glad I met Matteo! He built my website Masih hair salon at a very reasonable price, and now I have many more customers. Thank you so much!" Masih Hair Salon LLC said in a statement provided by Milk.
He is preparing to launch a site for his newest client, Hairbrains on Ocean Park.
Now that school has started, Milk works at a coffee shop next to John Adams and again at home before soccer practice, which he has every day except Friday. He said that adds up to about four hours of work a day.
"That might seem like a lot for a kid but the difference is that I truly enjoy what I do," he said.
His mother, Mina Nercessian, said he even handed out flyers door to door for one client that really needed new customers.
"I'm just so amazed by my son," Nercessian said. "He really cares about them getting new clients."
"Every pitch, every victory and every rejection is such an amazing life lesson," she said. "Great to see him building resilience and work ethics at such a young age."
In a few years, Milk hopes to build and maintain websites for 50 or more stores.
His goal, he said, is to "help grow this business to make it profitable for all of my teenage years."
For more information about MilkWebDesign, visit milkwebdesign.com.